Development of an Autonomous Centrifugal Microfluidic Dispenser for POCT

Abstract

This paper reports on the demonstration of a novel autonomous dispensing system for point of care testing (POCT). Although existing dispensing systems generally employ external triggers, such as changing rotational speed or heating of a device, our dispenser is driven at steady rotational speed without external triggers by using siphons, water-clock based autonomous timing and metering, and capillary forces. It becomes possible to dispense reagents simultaneously into multiple reaction chambers, by using this dispensing system. Simplicity of reagent handlings and uniformity of reaction conditions can be improved. Therefore it is expected to realize highly reliable and low-cost analytical systems, which are suitable for POCT, by integrating the dispenser on analytical devices.